


Alone

by prairiecrow



Series: Dragon Space Nine [2]
Category: Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alien Culture, Firelizards, Loneliness, M/M, Music
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-19
Updated: 2011-08-19
Packaged: 2017-10-22 20:29:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/242262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miles O'Brien, stranded on an alien world, ponders his fate. Set in the Dragon Space Nine crossover universe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alone

**Author's Note:**

> A shameless Pern AU, folks. I hope you'll forgive me for the liberties I've taken and enjoy the story for what it is. The basic premise: a shuttle carrying Julian Bashir, Miles O'Brien, Kira Nerys and Elim Garak has crossed a dimensional rift and crash landed on Pern. The four Offworlders are taken in by Fort Weyr, where an accident of Impression leaves Bashir, Kira and Garak with dragons and Miles O'Brien alone at Smithcrafthall to continue figuring out the puzzle of how they might possibly get home again.

It wasn’t a real cello, but the craftsmen at the Harper Hall at Fort Hold had listened carefully to Miles O’Brien’s detailed instructions and done their best to recreate the instrument he described. It was the right size and you braced it against your shoulder and played it with a bow, but the sounds that came out of it, while good enough in their own right, were still alien sounds. They gave every Terran tune he played on it a weird edge, hurting his heart when they should have eased it, reminding him that he was light years and possibly whole dimensions away from everything he knew and loved.

Miles gave up mid-tune, pausing with bow still to string and listening to the warm summer night beyond the window of his quarters at Smithcrafthall, Telgar Hold. Opening his eyes and looking up, he saw the sill of his open window arrayed with four firelizards of various hues, their little heads cocked at assorted angles, raptly listening. He flapped an irritable hand at them and snapped — “G’wan, git out of it!” — and they took wing with a chorus of startled chirps, darting away into the darkness and going  _between_  with little implosions of air where their bodies had been.

“Bloody nuisances,” he grumbled, reaching for the glass of wine he’d set aside on the nearby table and draining it in one draught. The Pernese didn’t even have the courtesy to have invented whiskey, which would have gone a long way toward solving Miles’ problems this night. The rest of the table was strewn with local measuring devices and scrolls and PADDs full of diagrams and calculations, the useless detritus of his relentless search to find a way back to the universe of Deep Space Nine. Nearly six months of hard work and he might as well have spent the time… well, chasing firelizards. At least he might have ended up with a set of soft-hided gloves in a pretty color to show for his troubles.

From the night a call came distantly, the three-toned bugle of Telgar’s watchdragon. Scowling, Miles put aside the empty glass and the musical instrument and got up from his seat, crossing to the window to gaze out into the moonlit darkness. The cultivated fields surrounding the Hold lay in ordered patterns almost to the horizon, and when he looked to the west he could see the the black bulk of the dragon perched on the heights of Telgar Hold, across the valley. Before he could stop himself he fetched a mighty sigh: the sight made him think of Julian, caring for a rapidly growing dragon of his own at Fort Weyr — and sharing a bed with Garak. Now  _there_ was a twist that Miles should have seen coming in hindsight: he’d always known that the young doctor was fascinated by the Cardassian spy, infatuated with him even, but not in a sexual way: no, Julian was just thrilled by the thought of mystery and puzzles and danger, even experienced by proxy… or so Miles had thought. 

Clearly there’d been a lot more to it than that, things that had been brought to the surface by Impression or some such nonsense. In any case Julian was now completely wrapped up in Garak’s web and the bastard was probably wearing as smug a smile as you please, the kind of smirk Miles would want to punch off his ugly face if they had to share the same place of residence.

Regardless of the exact chain of cause and effect, the net result was the same: Julian and Kira and the bloody Cardassian were at Fort Weyr, playing nursy to a bunch of flying lizards, and he was here at Smithcrafthall, playing his pseudo-cello and wallowing in self-pity.

After a moment he leaned on the windowsill and sighed again, half-hating himself for succumbing to a turn of mood this black. He tried to keep his spirits up, he really did, in spite of missing Keiko and Molly so badly that at night he wept into his pillow, in spite of staring into the darkness unable to sleep for remembering them and worrying about them and loving them. And now the three people he’d come here with, the only ones on this whole planet who could understand half of what he was saying, were being pulled away from him by something none of them had chosen but was nonetheless embedding them in Pern’s life and culture. Leaving him behind to play music only he knew to nobody, to drink alien wine and brood about what he’d lost. 

Strange, that he missed Julian almost as much as his family. The doctor was a know-it-all little pest but he was  _Miles’_  know-it-all little pest, a sort of surrogate kid brother he’d taken under his wing and into his heart. The thought of his innocent good-hearted friend underneath a ruthless Cardie was fit to make his blood boil, but it wasn’t as if he could do anything about it: even if hundreds of kilometres hadn’t separated them Julian was a grown man, naive in some ways, and too prone to see the good in everybody, but still capable of managing his own affairs. If he’d chosen to lay his heart in a pair of grey hands that had shed more blood than he could imagine there was nothing Miles could do about it: he’d already tried to talk him out of it, but Julian had been euphoric from the telepathic link he’d just been roped into and hadn’t even tried to listen.

Miles put his face into his hands and rubbed it slowly, blowing out a long weary breath, thinking of the inroads Julian had made with certain ladies at Fort Weyr before homosexual monogamy had hit him right between the eyes. Trust Julian Bashir to find a way to get laid no matter where he ended up! It wasn’t as if Miles hadn’t received his own fair share of offers — the women of Telgar Hold and the Smithcrafthall seemed fascinated by his nontypical facial features and his accent and what was doubtless the intriguing novelty of his Offworlder background — but he was a married man and considered his vows binding no matter what dimension he happened to find himself in. Besides, a quick roll in the hay wouldn’t solve his deepest and most abiding problem: having no one to talk to and no one to truly care about him for who he was, rather than for his aura of alien mystery. 

He was just about to start feeling truly sorry for himself when a soft  _pop_  of displaced air and a faint melodious warble from behind him made him turn around, to find a bronze firelizard perching itself on the table between the wine glass and the leaning fret of the pseudo-cello. Its wide eyes whirled green in the warm yellow glow of the oil lamp and when he looked directly at it it emitted a distinctly hopeful chirp, raising one forepaw and tilting its delicate head eagerly. 

“Brave little sod, aren’t you?” Miles told it sternly, and received only another chirp for his trouble. “Who d’you belong to, eh? I’ll have to have a word with them about keeping a tighter leash on you.”

The forearm-length creature settled its wings closer to its back and extended its head toward him, crooning softly deep in its throat. After a moment Miles shook his head ruefully. He knew what was wanted of him: say what you will about the firelizards, they had a real taste for music of any kind. “All right, y’talked me into it. But just one tune, mind!” He returned to his seat and drew the instrument to him again, then paused, pondering what he’d just said. “Aw, hell, who’m I kidding? I’ve got all night. Now, I think you’ll like this piece — it’s a lullaby by Brahms, just the ticket for a dainty little thing like you…”

The firelizard settled back on its haunches, eyes half-closing in rapturous appreciation as Miles set the bow to the strings again. Within a few minutes it would be joined by another flock of its friends, but he was prepared to put up with their presence now. 

Annoying as they could be, it beat the hell out of being totally alone.

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> I have a few more stories set in this universe which I'm inclined to post only if people indicate that they'd like to see them (I don't want to clutter up either board with fics that people just aren't interested in reading). So if you want to see more of Dragon Space Nine, by all means drop me a kudo or a comment. :) Thank you.


End file.
